Angelmaker

Joe Spork fixes clocks, in this rollicking romp of a spy thriller from the author of The Gone-Away World. Spork has turned his back on his father's legacy as one of London's flashiest and most powerful gangsters, aiming to live a quiet life. Edie Banister retired long ago from her career as a British secret agent, and spends her days with only a cantankerous old pug for company. That is, until Joe repairs a particularly unusual clockwork mechanism, inadvertently triggering a 1950s doomsday machine. His once-quiet life is suddenly overrun by psychopathic serial killers, dastardly villains, twisted geniuses, and mad monks who worship John Ruskin. On the upside, he catches the eye of bright and brassy Polly, a woman with enough smarts to get anyone out of a sticky situation. In order to save the world and defeat the nefarious forces threatening it, Joe must help Edie complete a mission she abandoned years ago, and he must summon the courage to pick up his father's old gun and join the fight.

"A joyful display of reckless, delightful invention, on a par with the rocket-powered novels of Neal Stephenson, if in rather more ironically diffident English form. Ideas come zinging in from all corners, and do so with linguistic verve and tremendous humour.... What a splendid ride."—Guardian (London)